President-elect Donald Trump offered what appeared to be the opening salvo of his strategy to bring an end to the Israel-Hamas war on Monday.
“If the hostages are not released prior to January 20, 2025, the date that I proudly assume Office as President of the United States, there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East, and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against Humanity,” he wrote on Truth Social. “Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!”
Trump’s pledge to hit Hamas “harder than anybody has been hit” isn’t a break from the current strategy but a continuation of it.
Trump didn’t mention Hamas by name, but it’s clear that this was an ultimatum to the group to release the remaining hostages it abducted in Israel during the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. (Israeli authorities estimate over 60 hostages taken in Israel remain in Gaza.)
Trump sells himself as a great negotiator who pierces through the noise and gets things done with his business acumen and a willingness to act aggressively toward his opponents. But in this case — as in so many others — Trump’s rhetoric seems far from a groundbreaking strategy. It looks closer to his typical bluster.
Trump’s belligerent language is a reminder that he’ll likely lean into what some call “the madman theory of foreign policy” — the idea unpredictability and an apparent willingness to use force aggressively can help a political leader intimidate his opponents and achieve his geopolitical goals. But it’s unlikely to be effective here. That’s because Trump’s pledge to hit Hamas “harder than anybody has been hit” isn’t a break from the current strategy but a continuation of it.
For over a year, the U.S. has been supporting Israel’s war on Hamas and its destruction of Gaza with intelligence, military advisers and huge amounts of weaponry and ammunition. Israel’s operations in Gaza have dramatically weakened Hamas, rendered huge swaths of the territory uninhabitable and resulted in what public health experts estimate are hundreds of thousands of deaths of Palestinian civilians. Human rights observers and scholars of genocide have deemed the situation genocidal.
While things can get worse — Trump can encourage Israel to expend even more energy laying waste to Gaza — it’s unclear how such a directive would bring Israel and Hamas closer to an elusive ceasefire and hostage deal. Hamas has demonstrated it is willing to tolerate massive military defeats and will bank on Israeli repression to help generate new recruits. That’s already happening. Hamas has also made clear that it’s indifferent to or eager to sacrifice massive amounts of civilian life in Gaza in order to achieve its political goals. There is no evidence that brutal repression is enough to compel it to give up on all of its demands at the negotiating table.
Moreover, the idea that Hamas is the only — or the primary — party that needs to be compelled to make concessions is misguided. Israelis have protested against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu en masse because his administration has made it clear that getting the hostages released isn’t his priority. Part of that can be explained by the reality that Netanyahu’s political survival — and protection from looming corruption charges — depends on the indefinite extension of the war.
Netanyahu has deliberately set vague criteria for the conditions for an end to his military operation: It’s unclear how and whether Hamas can ever be totally “destroyed.” That’s why former Gen. Benny Gantz quit Netanyahu’s war Cabinet in June, citing Netanyahu’s failure to commit to a clear postwar plan and saying Netanyahu stood in the way of a “real victory.” It’s why the Israel Defense Forces’ top spokesperson took the remarkable step of saying Netanyahu was “throwing sand in the eyes of the public” by promising that it was possible to completely destroy Hamas. “Hamas is an idea. Anyone who thinks we can eliminate Hamas is wrong,” he said in an interview with an Israeli broadcaster. As Vox explained in a report in October, Israel’s demands have been “both evolving and abstract”: Netanyahu reportedly torched a potential July ceasefire agreement with Hamas by insisting that Israeli troops maintain a permanent presence in Gaza, and that Israel would continue to have control of the Gaza/Egypt border. Those are much bigger — and more unrealistic — asks than previous demands for the return of Israeli hostages in Gaza, which is what the initial ceasefire conversations revolved around.
In other words, if Trump wants to be successful in getting the hostages released, he’s also going to need to persuade Netanyahu to stop playing games in committing to realistic terms for a proposal. Trump’s threatening to rain hellfire on Hamas isn’t going to alter the fundamental dynamics of the situation in Gaza. Trump might think it makes him sound like a madman who shouldn’t be messed with. But implying that he might try to help brutalize Gaza is the most predictable thing a U.S. president could promise right now.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. 
